March 29, 2009

Death Opens Doors on Group

Five members of the One Mind Ministry go on trial Monday. Ria Ramkissoon, the dead child's mother, reportedly has agreed to plead guilty to a lessor charge on the condition that the charge against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.

She will receive probation and treatment if she pleads guilty to child abuse resulting in death and cooperates with the prosecutors.

This was a particularly ghoulish case. The baby stopped saying amen at mealtime. So they deprived him of food and water until he died. The cult waited a week for Javon to to be resurrected and then they placed his body in a suitcase full of mothballs.

The psychiatric opinion was interesting. From a Washington Post article:

Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs, in part because they were shared by those around her.

"She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors' psychiatric evaluation.